Pictures of 21110 Research Institute

The Research Institute Kool-Aid is still flowing around the Internet, with many people enjoying its flavour out of phallic shaped cups – even more so now that these official pictures of the set have surfaced.

You’re looking at the final design of the set, which (as Brick Fanatics had pointed out) seems to have been produced a bit too quickly to be coincidental.

It’s been hard to be any happier about the set, as people have been going on about how great it is to have “more female minifigures” (those people with no imagination I spoke of before), and coincidentally how close to the original design the set is. I’m pretty sure someone is going to make a huge deal out of the latter at some point, probably even citing how much “better” female builders are than male ones.

The main difference between the original and final design is the choice of colours: it seems that LEGO have deliberately gone for more realistic colouring than the Friends-inspired palette of the original. They have, however, made a point of including elements in interesting colours: for example, the Blue and Dark Red 1×1 round tiles, the flask with a deep blue liquid, the transparent bottles and a 1×2 Transparent tile.

The minifigures look like they came out of a Build-A-Mini station from a LEGO store (I actually saw many of those parts at LEGOLAND Windsor!), but check out the one on the right: it looks as if they’ve created a minifigure styled around the project’s creator, noticing the badge on the new torso.
The head may also be a new print too, as I’ve not seen it before, but it’s kinda odd how she looks disgruntled on the job. Perhaps it’s a double-sided head?

My earlier comments aside: my first impression of the set is it’ll be great for parts and the unique scientist minifigure. I don’t have to have it, and I won’t go breaking down any walls or windows to get it, but I do want to see for myself what these other people are going nuts over. Perhaps the hype around this set really is only about, “yay we have an all-female LEGO set!”